To reproduce them, I made a 2-parts mold.
The walls are made of lego. The walls are made of lego.
Chimneys are from a model kit tree... and the 2 viper! Chimneys are from a model kit tree... and the 2 viper!

and here is a fresh whole squadron. and here is a fresh whole squadron.

For Viper and Raider, I tried a 3D printing, but my order was canceled by Sculpteo (a Shapeway like here in France) as being too thin !
I then tried an easy way with a tiny papercraft models, but the result did not convince me, so I did go with scratchs, to duplicate with resin.

In scale blueprints, generated to scale by Sculpteo, have been very helpful here.

The viper is really easy to do, following modules of the papercraft model, so based on rods, and square section evergreen strips quickly shaped.

For the Raider : it was also finally fairly easy, following the scaled blueprint. I used spare grooved parts for the cockpit, and clamp strip for the engines housings.

The diorama will depict a scene from the beginning of the pilot TV movie, when a patrol of Viper (Apollo and his brother) discovered the fleet of Cylon tanker and squadrons Cylon Raider hide in ambush behind a nebula, ready to attack the colonial fleet of Battlestars at the peace conference. This meeting will be a tragic outcome for Apollo's brother.

The dio is built on the same principle 2 wood boards and reinforcements. that will be covered with a plastic sheet, glued with double-sided tape.
The nebula will be made ??with kapok (the anoraks inner material), backlit with 2 cold white leds (thus slightly blue).
I intend to stand the kapok with fiber optic.

The electric socket location is drilled to insert the connector in strength.

With an circuit test, I realize that the kapok finally filters more the light than I thought.
As the dio was not ready, the lighting tests are done on a black chair.
In person, this is far less bright than on the picture (due to the sensitivity of the camera).

Therefore, I change the approach and replace LEDs with a LED spotlight.

The wooden frame is hollowed in the center to allow the spotlight to be inserted from the back.

The plastic sheet is set in place with double-sided tape.

It is then spray-painted : black paint and primer

The stars are made with turquoise and white gouaches. This needs hard bristle brush on the edge of the jar, above the surface to cover.
The first brushing produce drops that create the stars, and progressively as one brush, there is less paint, and it ends in nebulae, until there is no more paint in the brush.

To achieve red diamonds insignia in the bays, I planned initially to use a stencil I, and finally I xent with homemade decals .
It took a full afternoon to install them properly and regularly replace those who tried to come off as it dries. They were deliberately cutted off to give them a worn effect (still trying to stick to the original model).

The corners of the casements, various markings are applied by drawing in various boards .
Mini Cylon insignia are from the Revell Viper mk1 decals board (victory marks) in its latest edition.

Postshading and streaks are made in two colors: black and rust brown.

A layer of Klir to protect everything. Then a slight dark gray juice is applied, that will be only very slightly wiping to keep streaks and the dark veil effect.

He then received a coat of matt varnish.

Then finally final assembly.
The photos are a bit dull, I will do more later on a dark background.

I now need to build a small diorama where it will be the centerpiece .

I had to make several attempts before finding the right shade so the préombrage has almost completely disappeared. So, I had to equalize the gray base color with another coat.

The interior of the open bays are matt white .

The red stripes on the top are prepared with an underlayer of white (spraid non-uniformly), followed by a red broken with few drops of yellow. In the airbrush cup, the color is reddish orange, but once applied, the eye sees it as a warm red.

While this one is finished since few monthes, it is time to get back to the description of this Cylon Tanker building process.

A coat of primer reveals some defects on the engine block surface.
In addition, I spray the primer too far , and it is not super smooth.
So I went for a overall sanding, then filling bubbles with plastic putty.

And a new coat of primer, and once dry, as is my habit on this type of building, I smeared the model of a very heavy black wash as a preshading (which makes voluntary non-uniform under painted surfaces) .

I then apply a first coat of Tamiya xf66 light gray (misnamed in my opinion, as it is anything but light !)

The missing parts did arrived few weeks after the previous works on this model. And there was again a lot of cleaning and preparing to do as they were almost all bent (probably removed too early from the molds), covered of bubbles (as if it was raining) or excess material.

Since I will not all of them (a good third of the bays will be closed, I can choose the best parts in the lot).

So after a soapy bath to remove mold release product, they are unbent in hot water, then it take several evenings to fill the bubbles. The excess material is removed with a belt sander machine.

Before continue with these parts, I had to finish the assembly of the large central box. I hesitated if I was going to use 1 or 2 support rods.
I chose one because it looks best, but more complicated due to the length of the model. To be sure that the ship will stay straight, I used a fixed drill, embedded an aluminum tube, itself secured by wooden sticks and some nuts and bolts.
Wooden blocks are added in the bayes (that will be closed in the end), to strengthen the assembly and screw together the long parts.

Same thing at the ends to add material to plug rods and support the weight of the head and engine modules (as being full filled, they are quite heavy).

For the installation of the inner walls, I realized that I had finally removed too much material ! It was therefore necessary to add thickness with plastic cards. I used the new superglue 3 "universal", which has a slight delay in the curing, which allows the easy adjustment.
Many of those who were not visible were also glued to be able to support the cylindrical bay doors.

The rails in the bay are very thin, and several were damaged after all these manipulations. I have therefore removed (scraping, sanding) and replaced them with evergreen U-profiles.

The two large bays parts are finally glued togethern, using cyano and screws.

As they were not completely symmetrical, it was necessary to add one or two layers of plastic card at the end of the assembly.

The two upper and lower parts (roofs) are installed.
To make sure they stay straight, I added few layers of foam board (to avoid adding weight).
Incidentally, it will also allow me to give more matter to lay the cylindrical doors on it.
To align them, I also had to fill inner walls (as they have proved to lack some height to meet the ceiling) with plastic strips. It was necessary to go gradually and identified each parts and locations, as each one is adjusted spécifically.

Once glued, we can not see all the things added inside to arrive to a fair result.

The head and engine modules are finally bonded to the central body.

There are few small seams to fill here or there (putty, plastic card).

some tank track links are added on the edge of open bays to simulate locks (like on the original model).

Here dry tested, we see that the bells nozzles are almost touching each others, while there should be a gap of about 5mm.

I also noted that they were not centered correctly. All this is corrected (tagging correctly the length on each radius), and then sanding quietly (to not remove too much material !)

While I let the cheeks drying quietly, I quickly filled the one on the top side with superglue. Be careful with this method, do not allow the glue to dry for several hours, 10 or 20 minutes max (it should be dry but still soft). After it will become too hard and takes 10 times longer to sand, with a good chance of damaging the rest of the part.
I then re-written new lines. Sorry, no photos, the result can be see below.

The paneling is then re-writte on the cheeks starting with vertical lines.

The horizontal lines follow fairly quickly, ensuring to remain at right angles to the vertical (while the eye tends to insidiously deviate from because of the shape of the room).

Raised panels are added (plastic card). The tiny panels are cut in a sheet of 0.2 mm rhodoïd (found in the stationery, not in model store).

By the way, on top, I removed the three small bones behind the turret, whic were not very well molded, and replaced them with shaped plastic card. The semi-spheres on the rear flat area are also replaced.

In the small trench in front of the rim, I inserted a thin vertical strip

Then I go on the underside, where references do not give a clear view of the paneling. So even if the kit seems slightly wrong, I decided to keep it, just completing it as best I could.
I also left the raised paneling, also incorrect, again adding small squares of 0.2 m rhodoid.

As a result, each side must complete the empty space.

Last operation on the head, left and right sides of the nose needed to be sanded bevel.
(pictures to come)

Back on the engines module, where I have a few details to complete, especially in the space between the body of the two engines, with plastic profiles. I may use this old 1/720 helicopter propeller for the last strip that will be added after the painting stage will be completed.

There are a lot of piping encircling the engine module, that I did with brass rods.

As I was waiting for the missing parts of the bays, I was stuck on this assembly, and made a little break!